Supreme Court

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court is New Zealand’s final court of appeal. It deals with criminal and civil appeals from the lower courts. The Supreme Court must grant leave before an appeal can begin.

The number of applications for leave to appeal filed in the Supreme Court had been decreasing from June 2011 until September 2012, however from October 2012 there has been a steady increase in the number of applications for leave to appeal.

These statistics are for the 12 months to 30 June 2013.

Criminal jurisdiction

In the 12 months ended 30 June 2013:

• Nine new criminal appeals were filed, (up from six in the previous 12 months)
• Three criminal appeals were disposed of with three separate judgments and one appeal was abandoned (compared to the previous 12 months where eight separate judgments disposed of 24 appeals and one other appeal was abandoned).

As at 30 June 2013 there were eight active criminal appeals (awaiting hearing or judgment ) compared with 3 at 30 June 2012.

Civil jurisdiction

In the 12 months ending 30 June 2013:

• 21 new civil appeals were filed, (up from 13 in the previous 12 months).  

• 15 separate judgments of the Court disposed of 15 civil appeals (this includes an application for recall of judgment) and a further two appeals were abandoned (16 separate judgments disposed of 21 appeals and two further appeals were abandoned in the previous 12 months).  

As at 30 June 2013 there were 14 active civil appeals (awaiting hearing or judgment). This is an increase of 40% compared to 30 June 2012.

Statistics